1992 Barcelona Olympics Women’s 10,000 Meters: Two Athletes Shaping Hearts and Minds
On 7 August 1992, at the Barcelona Olympic Games, two women lined up for the 10,000m run not knowing that their spontaneous post-race display would touch millions of viewers.
Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia and Elana Meyer of South Africa, after a surprise 1-2 finish, link arms for a victory lap in front of a global audience of millions.
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Apartheid and South Africa: A 32-Year Olympic Ban
In 1992, a new South African government saw the light and athletes were finally given the green light to compete at the Olympic Games after a 32-year ban. Throughout her international competitions leading up to the Barcelona Olympic Games, the media bombarded Elana Meyer with political questions, but she refused to be used as a pawn.
“It was a good learning [experience] for me to see that you cannot say, “I am not political” said Meyer years later. “Going into the international world, I knew you had to stand up for what you believe, and you have to believe in something. You can’t just be the runner who focuses on your running.”
“It was an extraordinary journey to get to the Olympics in 1992. So just to be able to walk out to the stadium and represent my country was amazing.
“Going into the race, the focus was on giving the best performance for myself and my country. I never anticipated that it would have such significance beyond the race.”
Not the Favorites
Derartu Tulu and Elana Meyer weren’t the favorites in the presence of world champion Liz McColgan of Great Britain.
The 10,000-meter race is a long and grueling 25 laps. Often, the first half of the race is run in a big group at a relatively slow pace, with the race picking up tempo and becoming more interesting in the second half.
Breaking Down the Race
Tulu and Meyer found themselves bunched in the pack with other runners for much of the first half of the race. Tulu and Meyer were probably the best “kickers” in the field, meaning they were the most skilled in sprinting at the fast pace needed late in the race. While a few athletes dropped off from the pack, not much changed for the first 20 minutes of the race. Then, all of a sudden, Meyer surged and changed the dynamic.
Tulu was the only athlete to cover Meyer’s move. Commentators suggested she had high heat tolerance — she was wearing a white T-shirt — because she was from Africa, an overplayed trope grounded in racist assumptions about Black athletes having “natural” and “environmental” advantages in sport that diminished their hard work and achievements.
In Tulu’s case, the trope was even more wrong because she was famously from Bekoji, a town that lies at over 9,000 feet, where temperatures seldom go above 75 degrees and where grass is often covered by frost in the early mornings. Further, the Ethiopian training style and philosophy was centered on avoiding hot temperatures and the strong equatorial sun. Tulu, like nearly all Ethiopian athletes, trained at dawn and dusk in brisk conditions and would have had a hard time finding hot and humid conditions in which to train.
In the final laps of the race, Tulu displayed brilliant running strategy. Meyer urged her to take the lead with a hand wave, and Tulu would not comply. As the laps ticked away, Meyer’s form broke. She nodded her head up and down; her arms flailed with greater movement on every straightaway; her teeth began to show betraying her suffering. All telltale signs of a runner on the verge of breakdown.
Tulu, by contrast, stayed stoic. Meyer tried to surge ahead, to no avail. Then, on the final lap, with a huge kick, Tulu took the win.
Ethiopia’s Tulu overtakes Meyer on the last lap of women’s 10,000m final to win a thrilling race.
Meyer immediately ran over to hug her rival before they completed a lap of the track hand-in-hand.
A Race with Many Firsts
Derartu's win in the 10,000 meter race in the Barcelona Olympics goes down in the history books as the first gold-medal win ever by an African woman.
Elana Meyer became the first South African to win an individual Olympic medal in 32 years, taking silver.
Not only did Tulu and Meyer go on to occupy the top two places on the podium, their joint celebration on a spontaneous victory lap symbolized hope for a new Africa.
Years later Meyer would say “Looking back, it wasn't the 25 laps of the race that mattered, but it was the 26th which made an impact.”
Some would argue South Africa is worse off today than in 1990. The country has suffered economically with many (white) South Africans emigrating post Apartheid, political corruption and health care crises like Aids. But (1) South Africa could not stay Apartheid any longer, and (2) the final chapter of this story has yet to be written.
Meanwhile once again two athletes showed the world by their spontaneous celebration that the Olympic Games has the power to shape hearts and minds far beyond sport.
The Barcelona Games were watched by an estimated global audience of 3.5 billion people.
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